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The nation's largest health insurer, UnitedHealth, will muscle up for its fight against rising prescription drug costs by spending more than $12 billion to buy pharmacy benefits manager Catamaran Corp. Pharmacy benefits managers, or PBMs, help negotiate the prices that customers pay for prescription drugs. They are seen as a key component in the push to contain soaring costs from specialty drugs, complex medicines that can represent treatment breakthroughs but often at a much higher price than other drugs. Rising costs from these drugs are expected to affect more patients as use of the treatments grows and coverage for them shrinks. UnitedHealth Group is based in Minnetonka, Minn.,...

Related "Pharmaceutical Industry" Articles

The nation's largest health insurer, UnitedHealth, will muscle up for its fight against rising prescription drug costs by spending more than $12 billion to buy pharmacy benefits manager Catamaran Corp.Pharmacy benefits managers, or PBMs, help negotiate...

Mary Marcuccio knows all about the toll of opiate abuse: Her son became addicted to prescription painkillers that he first obtained from a friend's medicine cabinet.
"Our story is typical," said Marcuccio, a former Southington resident who runs...

MIDDLETOWN – Consumers would no longer pay a sales tax on over-the-counter-drugs, but they would continue to pay taxes on clothing and footwear costing less than $50 under a proposal outlined Monday by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
Both taxes were imposed in...

Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Cheshire has named a new chief executive, David L. Hallal, to replace current CEO and company founder Dr. Leonard Bell, effective April 1.Bell will continue to serve as chairman of the board of directors, the company...

CaroGen Corp. will establish a laboratory at UConn's Technology Incubation Program in Farmington to develop its vaccine technology research, the company is announcing Monday.
The Hamden-based biotechnology company has four employees and hopes to grow...

MERIDEN — Connecticut's U.S. senators are trying to put public pressure on the Centers for Disease Control to buy flu vaccines from a local drug company, escalating Sen. Richard Blumenthal's private lobbying.The senators sent a letter to the CDC...

This month, negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership resume in Australia. Officials from the United States and 11 other major economies are meeting to settle the final details of the trade pact, with the hope of passing the final deal by year's...

For months, Advanced Grow Labs LLC — one of Connecticut's four medical marijuana growing companies — slogged through the process of competing for a state license, securing local zoning approvals, and outfitting a building to state regulations that are...

Our 14-year-old son seems depressed, to us, at least. His principal sees no sign of depression but thinks he's socially anxious. The subjects of counseling and medication have come up. We have suggested to him that he get more exercise and spend less time...

Marinus Pharmaceuticals, an eight-person company working on a drug that may be effective against epileptic seizures, went public Thursday with a stock price of $8 a share.The shares traded as high as $8.16 on Thursday on the NASDAQ exchange, and closed at...

Pfizer Inc on Tuesday left investors guessing whether it would renew its pursuit of its British rival, AstraZeneca, but said it was considering other deals.The largest U.S. drug maker reported higher-than-expected second-quarter revenue, helped by growing...

For the past decade or so, more people have died in Connecticut each year from unintentional drug overdoses than from automobile accidents. The drugs involved are mostly prescription painkillers, not illegal substances such as heroin.
It's a hidden...

I have suddenly found myself in the ranks of the uninsured.
At 63, I left my workplace and started a company out of my home. I knew I would need private individual insurance, which would be costly. But my husband and I (he left the same employer but is...

Meeting for the first time since regulations for the medical marijuana program were enacted, the state's six-member Board of Physicians began working out the details of an entirely new system Wednesday.
Without the guidance of the U.S. Federal Drug...

Proponents of Connecticut establishing a law that would allow the involuntary treatment of people with mental illness in the community have recently used two misleading ideas to support their case.
They acknowledge that voluntary treatment is preferable,...

Toxicology tests show that Adam Lanza had no alcohol or drugs in his body when he shot and killed 20 first-graders and six women at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown on Dec. 14.
The tests were conducted as part of the autopsy by state Chief Medical...

Do you remember the last time your blood pressure was checked and what the numbers were? While knowing your blood pressure numbers is important, it’s also good to know what those numbers mean and if you should take action to help lower them.
High blood...

For most people, Halloween means confronting the fears that assail us from the outside — ghouls and vampires and zombies. But for me this season, I've come to realize that the most perverse demons can lurk within.
For many years, my family, friends and...

Not only do women hold up half the sky. We do it while carrying a 500-pound purse.
Women carry with us, at all times, everything we might need to start life in a new state. Our purses contain the all the merchandise found in a Quickie Mart or a...

I have obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD.
I suffer from mainly obsessive OCD, which is characterized by repetitive intrusive thoughts. The symptoms of a person with the purely obsessive form of OCD are very different from those associated with...